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<title>Sick Of Feeling (Human) by CloudDreamer</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22500634">Sick Of Feeling (Human)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer'>CloudDreamer</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Portraits of Monsters [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Parahumans Series - Wildbow</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Disassociation, Fucky Superpowers, Mentions of violence/character death but it's pretty vague</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 17:41:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>528</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22500634</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a believer feels something between emptiness and existence.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Portraits of Monsters [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1583266</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Sick Of Feeling (Human)</h2></a>
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    <p>The believer never stains her own hands. </p><p>She's talked to other masters. Other killers. Never about murder, never addressing that line that can’t be walked back, but about violence. It’s harmless, when it’s in the general sense. Death itself is danced around, avoided whenever possible and spoken of in euphemisms whenever possible. </p><p>Carmilla doesn’t like it. They'd rather everyone was honest, stable. Like stone. A person is the one thing that isn’t flexible beneath their fingertips. She understands them, in the abstract sense, but making connections isn’t her strong suit. She exists in the in between. Never quite here, never quite in the heart of things. </p><p>They have to stain their hands. Their hands are their only tool. </p><p>She presses her head against her lap, hard. She understands, instinctually, where her three presences are. The other two are just as strong in her head as this one is. She can reach out and move them without a distinct thought, like moving her own body. The presences are almost overpowering. Everything between the three bodies is weighted equally. Those two can’t make a sound, even when they’re slammed against the ground, broken. Twisted, into different shapes, different textures. </p><p>When she picks at her flesh toned skin, it starts to bleed, but there’s no blood in her other two shapes. They’re hollow. They’re hollow, but the believer isn't, and she's never in the midst of things like the others are.</p><p>Sometimes she's too far away from them, from anything in the right shape for her me-ness to fill and move, and she feels so empty. She feels blind. But when her extra senses are contained, held, she doesn't feel whole either. She doesn't think she'll ever feel whole. Was she whole, when she was younger? Before she was made like this, her soul split apart. It’d cost her something to be strong, but that strength had gotten her through that worst moment. </p><p>What had it cost? Her future? Her peace?</p><p>The believer can’t recognize her body in the mirror. Her other hands crush bodies, trapping them, breaking them, and she can’t recognize her body in the mirror. It’s such a small thing. All the pieces are here. Flesh. Guts. A heart beats inside this chest, and she can hear it more than she can feel it. </p><p>She doesn't feel the pain as the knife digs into her shell’s head. She takes the hit, and Egg uses the opportunity of the attacker’s split attention to drop the floor out from under him. She just looks at her legs. How long has it been since she's eaten? She doesn't know.</p><p>That body is the most fragile. It is the most necessary. But there is the least of her in here. These hands are soft, not callused by all the work they known they've done. The face is smooth, uncreased with stress lines despite every stressful thing she's done. She'd look innocent, if it weren’t for the dead look in these eyes. Expressions don’t come naturally to her. They never did, and they certainly don't now.</p><p>The believer's heart is split three ways and there isn’t enough of her in any of them. </p>
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